Bitcoin: Naïve, Evil & Demented

Shall I start with the evil part, or the demented part? Bitcoin is not just a bit con. Bitcoin is obviously a Ponzi scheme. It’s always a pleasure to infuriate geeks and tiny crabs. “Harriet” from Oakland (a Silicon Valley suburb) contradicted me, with typical techie arrogance: “Please learn what a Ponzi scheme is. Wikipedia will help you.”

Wikipedia is to geeks what the bible is to pedophile priests. A Ponzi, or pyramid, scheme is a financial scheme where early investors make money from later investors. That’s surely the case of Bitcoin. In 2011 the value of one Bitcoin rapidly rose from about $0.30 to $32, before falling back down to $2. Those who bought $30,000 of Bitcoins at $30 soon found their so called “investment”, or “saving”, to be worth $2,000. Now in Japan, a Bitcoin bank disappeared. Real money was exchanged for sheer bamboozling.

The Truth About The Public-Private Fractional Reserve System

Geeks tend to be extremely mentally undeveloped outside, while being very smug about their small pathetic idiosyncratic view of the world (in particular all that they do not understand, they turn into a two cent joke; that’s also a characteristic of mathematicians; being one of them, I know the syndrome well).

Geeks believe that there are no empires, and they believe that, if there were some empires, they would be evil, thus irrelevant. They also believe, that they, the Geeks, are not evil, that Wikipedia (in English) is never wrong, and that links are all the truth you need.

Why to step in that mental swamp? Because Bitcoin is a delicious counterexample to the naïve concept of currency.

What’s a currency? It’s a space where an empire allows rewards and promises to be exchanged, backed-up by the empire military might. Fundamentally, a currency is the token system the empire’s soldiers are paid with. Emperor Septimus Severus pointed out to his sons, while dying in Britannia in 211 CE, that was the basis of all.

This is the hard version. This is reality.

To feed the state, the population needs to works, partly, for the state. That’s why taxation was invented. When there is not enough taxation, the state collapses. The best example of that collapse is the Late Roman empire, when there was not enough taxation of the rich to pay for defense (thus the cheap trick to use the Franks to insure defense).

Compare with the only back-up of bitcoin: not an army of soldiers, but an army of con men on Wall Street and other well organized crime. (Organized crime used Bitcoin for money laundering.)

Here is a related example: why is betting so popular in Asia? Because those who bet actually win. Why? So that they will be encouraged to bet some more, throw more money in the system. For which purpose? Because Organized Crime needs to launder money, and betting is how it does it. Losing 20% or so, is the cost of the laundering service to Organized Crime (such as Drug Trafficking).

Is a currency always created by an empire? At first sight two objections come to mind: the Thaler, and the Euro. For both it looks as if no empire was connected to them. However, that’s an illusion. (As anti-European fanatics are finding out, to their horror.)

The Thaler (or Taler or Czech Tolar… hence Dollar) was a silver coin used throughout Europe by many states for four hundred years. ( Etymologically, “Thaler” comes from German for “valley”, same as Neanderthal.) The Thaler was backed by states with serious armies: Austria, the Holy Roman German empire, Prussia, the Netherlands, etc.

A loose coalition of states can just be articulated around the army of just one state. That’s what happened with Prussia, which totally dominated the German speaking world from 1815 (partial dismemberment of Revolutionary France) until 1945 (eradication and annihilation of Prussia).

Similarly, the Euro is (mostly) backed by Franco-German might at this point. (Franco-Germania plus its immediate satellites makes a super-power, albeit one different in nature from the territory-rich USA.)

The naïve fundamental idea of Bitcoin was to create a currency without guns to back it up. Bitcoin one of the most famous Ponzi schemes in history? Some naive “techies” furiously object.

They are the same ones who firmly believe that Yahoo, Google, Facebook, are not, repeat: not, government spies agencies. (Hey, did not their chiefs “protest” to the “commander in chief”?)

If you think the usual suspects, the pirate speculators of the Wall Street type have nothing to do with Bitcoin, please learn about Wall Street. But Wikipedia won’t help you (Wall Street guys have enough money to make sure Wikipedia says exactly what they want it to say).

On 19 November 2013, the value of Bitcoin on the Japan-based Mt.Gox exchange soared to a peak of US$900 following a United States Senate committee hearing, at which the committee was informed, by the FBI, no less, that virtual currencies were a legitimate financial service. On the same day, bitcoins traded for over RMB¥6780 (US$1100) in China.

How could the FBI be that corrupt? Some will whine. Well, what’s the FBI? An instrument of the state, just like the Dollar. It’s all about a tribe, or its leaders, exerting power.

Now visualize this: the true leaders of the USA are the plutocrats. They devised a tax code so that they don’t pay enough taxes to prevent them to become ever richer (why would they? They are in power, and the rabble does not know it!).

How did the plutocrats acquire so much power in century? Mostly by doing exactly what president Jackson was afraid the Rothschild would do to the USA (and what the Rothschilds claimed they were doing in Europe… not that their fellow big time bankers were not doing it too). In the present fractional reserve system, the state has farmed out the making of money to some private, unelected individuals, the bankers. The Bitcoinists thought they had found a scheme to do the same. That was naïve. They drunk Ronald Reagan’s idiotic propaganda, and come to believe that We The People could do without a state.

For more than 2,000 years in the West, the government created money (with a face value often much higher than its real value), but tax collecting was farmed out to private enterprises. Now it’s the other way around: tax collecting is public, money creation, private. That’s a big mistake. We have, unsurprisingly, a system in which the money creators, the bankers, create money, that is, power, at will. That abundance of money has allowed them to buy the “democratically elected” representatives.

Thus now, as Rotschild said, the bankers control the government. Plutocracy found that money creation to be its best trick in a long time.

Can we enjoy a loftier perspective? Sure. Money is power, and power is measured by energy. Not all energy is good: blowing up the Earth won’t be good. A way to do that? One could set fire to 20 trillion tons of coal underground, and get plenty of energy, until the biosphere is destroyed. (Some plan to do that.)

So energy expenditure has to be controlled by long term ethics. This is what I call AWE (Absolute Worth Energy). With the enormous computing power we now have, it’s practical. AWE, accounting in useful energy units, is unavoidable, as it’s the only accounting system that will save civilization. AWE would make a perfect Bitcoin (AWEC: Absolute Worth Energy Coin). But of course it would need the support of the government, and that only if We The People pass laws to force it to do so.

Patrice Aymé

Note 1: A big deal is made by Bitcoin crooks that computers are computing the scheme. In the geeks’ minds, computers are superior souls, above the fray. However, it doesn’t matter that computers compute in the background of Bitcoin. Pyramid schemes are always about guys making computations in the background.

Note 2: Those who believe in bitcoin don’t believe in history, or sovereignty. That the wealthiest use a parallel currency with artworks, reinforces my point: only the sovereign, wealth, can create a currency durably! The wealthiest can use artwork as a currency in all impunity, precisely because they rule the world (and only the wealthiest are wealthy enough to use that currency). Average bitcoin users don’t rule the world (although governments let organized crime use bitcoin for quite a bit…)… thus their currency will not rule the world, either…

58 Responses to “Bitcoin: Naïve, Evil & Demented”

Calling bitcoin a ponzi scheme was so 2013. I suggest you read into the mechanics of how bitcoin works and laugh at your past self 🙂 Bitcoin may be complicated, but anyone can understand it if they take the time.

Bitcoin, WAS, de facto, a pyramid scheme. Do you need to see people in jail to believe that? There is nothing to laugh about: those who think Bitcoin can be more than a pyramid scheme, do not understand what a currency is. A currency is something created by the state(s).
Grow up, geeks, get to learn beyond your nose!
PA

The beautiful thing in a Ponzi scheme is that its victims are also its willing accomplices. Starting at a certain level of economic acumen, which most well-to-do share, they perfectly know the scheme they’re buying into is a pyramid and only waits to crumble. They merely plan to rob those coming after them before those coming before take the money and run. And they know their risks. I don’t know why Madoff is serving time; he was merely organizing a game of that extreme sport, the rich robbing each other.

(some Ponzi schemes do target the poor and ignorant, such as multi-layered marketing schemes foisted on unemployed people. Their operators are carrion eaters. Except that real acrrion eaters are useful.)

As for the Bitcoin thing… it made me laugh very hard. Some geeks are going to have to hide very deep from some idiotic but well-organized Mob types… Hollywood movie in the making there, with the usual Mob finger in the pie.

bitcoin started off as an experiment in cryptography and decentralized transactions. I doubt the inventors planned a ponzi all along. It just the geeks (looking at silicon valley 2.0 euphoria) went crazy. Money without state (and its military backing) probably will not succeed..unless they design global basket currency (SDR ?), and enable it to be digital (adopt some bitcoin features).

I do think technology has potential for disrupting good old wall.st, banking and big money finance. There will be ponzis, diversions (by bad actors) and failures on the path. But , you cant stop evolution for too long.

Dear Red: I have written lots about currencies, and I agree with getting rid of banks. I agree with the aim of many of the pro-Bitcoin geeks. However, they will have to implement direct democracy first.

The overall idea that society can proceed without government is as wrong and pro-plutocratic as possible. What we need is a revolution, to implement a new, more advanced government… using the Internet. This is happening in Switzerland (without Internet, even; see my essay on Switzerland).
PA

I have a sort of running fight with Amna Sheikh in some of the comments that provides more on my position.

Yes, i’m from Silicon Valley, and it’s hilarious how angry some around here get about Bitcoin. With all the cash flowing in the Valley, you would think they don’t need to get involved with the Mafia. Still something like that is needed from the gov to go around banks.

You cant evento define ponzi properly, if you dont like wikipedia, use the definition of the SEC at least, or is that too technical (“nerdy”) for you as well?
You fail not only in researching but in reasoning, what a joke.

Dear Ignorant Idiot: I have empathy for your mental condition. You sound exactly like the ignorant idiots I was criticizing. You insult, because insults are easy, and science difficult. How do I know this? As all insulters, you allege the other is a mental retard, but then you don’t point at any statement that is false (and why). So you do not advance the debate at all. And that means you are not interested by that.

You just want people who could oppose you to be afraid that you would insult them. And thus let your point of view stand unchallenged.

OK, let me quote Wikipedia, in an attempt to sink to your joking level. Here is Wikipedia first sentence:

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from existing capital or new capital paid by new investors, rather than from profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation

Bit Coin crooks will insist that Bitcoin has not (yet!) been proven to be fraudulent. Well, all frauds are like that. The wild rise and fluctuation of Bitcoin have indeed made it into a “fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from existing capital or new capital paid by new investors”.

So I agree to the letter with Wikipedia. You say I did not. Does that mean you are a liar too?

By the way, I belong to .1% of 1% as far as being “technical”, worldwide, so you may want to review your notion of technicality, and what “reason” means. But of course the reason of a rattlesnake is not that of Anaxagoras.

I’m also amused by the use you make of the word “fail” as in “epic fail”, a tell tale semantic marker of the tini tiny minds of geeks.
In any case, let sit back and relax, while we watch Bitcoiners head to jail. One can only pray that Justice will be more severe with them, than with the banksters!
;-)!
PA

“A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from existing capital or new capital paid by new investors, rather than from profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation.”

Happy to keep interesting. But I fail to see why my critic of Bitcoin is surprising. As my essay makes clear, but for the support of the government, Bitcoin is somewhat similar to the fractional reserve system: money out of nothing. AWE is the opposite of that.
PA

Bitcoin most certainly is NOT a ponzi scheme: 1) There’s no central person running the ‘scheme’, 2) there is no guarantee of return, 3) Bitcoin is traded on an open (not closed) market. You would have learned that had you read the rest of the Wikipedia entry and actually done research on bitcoin. The reality is that bitcoin acts just like a stock, new technology or commodity; those who buy early do tend to make the most profits, but that hardly makes them ponzi schemes. You owe your readers a retraction.

Ponzi was one particular guy arrested in a particular century, by the USA, a particular country. If the founder of particular Ponzi scheme has to have Ponzi’s DNA, I agree I failed. I should have researched Ponzi’s DNA and then find it was not like that of the inexistent founder of Bitcoin. As a geek researching with the intelligence of an ant, I failed.

As an insect, I apologize for my lack of insect intelligence.

However, I am not truly a geek. It’s easy to fake being one, one has just to reduce one’s horizon to the tiny. As my true self, an insectivore, though, I will just gulp more insects.

Pyramid schemes have existed for millennia. Bitcoin is clearly one. I will not be surprised Bitcoinists end in the slammer.

More philosophically, as I said a currency means, first, military back-up.

A currency is as good as the army that gets paid from it.

Governments create armies, currencies, inflation, and free markets. OK, maybe I have it wrong: armies create government, which, in turn… If yopu want to change the way the currency is created, and whom it profits, well change the government.

Instead of putting the head below the sand to search for bits & coins.

Oh, by the way, you are right, indeed some stock offerings ARE Pyramid Schemes. One can actually view Bitcoin as a generalization of the dishonesty in the financial markets… Which is certainly higher now than 30 years ago.
PA

Very true, John. Any such mania can be viewed as a pyramid, and it becomes a pyramid scheme if its construction is not due to happenstance, and a criminal intent was involved. Obviously the case of Bitcoin. Although that may be hard to prove in court, but we will see… If Putin does not distract us too much.
PA

Rev: I have never censored a post, even from some crazy Nazi nuts (way back: there are around 10,000 comments on the site). When I posted the Nazi stuff, I added a muscular comment. I would censor only stuff against USA or French law (such as pedophilia). Should that happen, I probably apply partial censorship.
I am perfectly furious that outfits such as the Daily Beast, New York Times, Huffington Post, European Tribune, Daily Kos, and various “philosophy” sites, and some bankers managed sites (managed in hiding, going to the sites don’t reveal top bankers are managing them), have applied ferocious and sometimes absolute censorship (“banned”) against me.

Anyway, I don’t censor. However I have been travelling and socializing in the last 2 days, and taking care of my toddler-daughter, so my reaction time is way down. Now you are automatically allowed in the site (whereas the New York Times, to which I sent more than 20,000 $ over the years, insist to my face that I CANNOT be “TRUSTED”).
PA

Rev: Sorry about that. Your comment did not appear in my system. I even checked the spam blocker (which had been known to jail even authorized commenters) Beats me! I would suggest to repost it, as gmax said.
PA

Excellent find Kevin! Wow. I was unaware of that new horror. Why Bitcoinists are “mining” their coins is philosophically baffling. It reflects a total misunderstanding of what currencies are… except if one embraces right wing nutty, deeply fascist propaganda a la Larouche and company. Here it goes, an extract of the linked article:

Bitcoin has a dark side: its carbon footprint

Michael Carney_PandoDaily By Michael Carney
On December 16, 2013

Pollution

Bitcoin may be making a few people wealthy, but it’s killing us all. The crypto-currency that’s caught the world by storm has a dark side: its carbon footprint.

At today’s value of roughly $1,000 per bitcoin, the electricity consumed by the bitcoin mining ecosystem has an estimated carbon footprint – or total greenhouse gas emissions – of 8.25 megatonnes (8,250,000 tonnes) of CO2 per year, according to research by Bitcarbon.org. That’s 0.03 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas output, or equivalent to that of the nation of Cyprus. If bitcoin’s value reaches $100,000, that impact will reach 3 percent of the world’s total, or that of Germany. At $1 million – which seems farcical but which may not be out of the realm of possibility given the artificially limited bitcoin supply – this impact rises to 8.25 gigatonnes, or 30 percent of today’s global output, and equivalent to that of China and Japan combined.

Bitcoins aren’t mined from the earth’s crust like most physical commodities – although at least that leaves tangible evidence of its environmental impact. Rather, they are “mined” by computers solving a set of complicated computational problems. These problems are designed to get more difficult over time, until the year 2140 when the 21 millionth (and final) bitcoin is mined. Early in bitcoin’s existence, it was feasible to run a successful mining operation with a standard PC. Now the task requires custom mining rigs that can run orders of magnitude more processes per second.

The top of the line model, which is currently made by a Swedish company called KnCMiner, costs around $13,000 and can mine at a rate 550 gigahashes per second: They’ve sold $28 million worth, and soon these too will be obsolete. The total computational power of the global bitcoin mining network today is more than seven million gigahashes, and climbing. That’s 256 times greater than the world’s top 500 supercomputers, combined.

Patrice Ayme Whatever you say, Amna. Let me explain slowly: whatever the concept, there is a hierarchy. For example, Newton Mechanics is the first order of General Relativity. If the first fails, so does the second. That’s actually a big problem, as there is evidence this is the case. So the definition of pyramid scheme I used is the first order definition. Anything satisfying it is a pyramid scheme. You see, mathematicians do this a lot: finding a more general definition that allows to do more thinking. Hence the category of sheaves was a generalization of points (Grothendieck and company, 1950-1960s)
PA

Bitcoin itself has nothing to do with making money – it is a system designed to allow the people to have control over their money, instead of the government. as more people are interested in attaining bitcoin, yes the value goes up – which is true for ANYTHING in this world (gold, for example).

When more people want something, the value goes up. duh. if you want to call that a ponzi scheme, go right ahead, but your definition is meaningless. especially in light of the fact that bitcoin isn’t designed as an investment opportunity at all – some people have decided to treat it that way (again, anyone can do this to anything) – but bitcoin’s role is to take money manipulating power away from the government.

Dear Amna: I will certainly explain even more slowly. In between two bouts of pulsions to truncate you ever more slowly. You should read my essay carefully. Some people have made huge money from Bitcoin. So, de facto, it has to do with making money. That was the second order point. In first order, I have written dozens of essays on the currency problem, at a level of depth I saw nowhere else [search my site under “fractional reserve”, “currency”, “euro”, “dollar”, etc.].

The naivety is that currencies don’t have to do with people. They have to do with government and armies. If people want to change the currency system, as I do, they have to change the GOVERNMENT. You want to take manipulating power away from the present government? Make a new one, as in Ukraine.

Patrice Ayme Ah Chris, my observation is that all currencies are FIAT. That means, created by the government. An exception was the Roman Solidus and its predecessor, which was gold coin used for more than 12 centuries. However there was simply not enough gold (and later, silver) to make precious coins.

So the government decided what the value ought to be (the same, just worse, happened in China). Right now the situation is worse, because money is created through rather unregulated private banks (mandated by the governments). As it is, now, too much money is created for the hyper rich, not enough for the poor.

Bitcoin is just a criminal organization, not worth mentioning in a serious debate on currencies, except as an example of what a currency is NOT. In this world, only Puritans and Jihadists believe in purity. it’s not a question of a currency being honest. Anything processed by banksters won’t be honest.

Bitcoin is nearly opposite of a pyramid scheme in a mathematical sense. Because Bitcoins are algorithmically made scarce, no exponential benefit is derived from introducing new users to use of it. There is a quantitative benefit in having additional interest or demand, but this is in no way exponent…

Alexi Helligar: According to the article the algorithmic scarcity of Bitcoin makes it the opposite of a pyramid scheme.

I am familiar with this argument, which is born, at best, from the mathematical naivety of the partisans of Bitcoin. The exact same argument can be used for any pyramid scheme: there are limits always. Does not matter if idiots make computations in the background of a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes have always been about guys making computations in the background.

Whenever one has a pyramid scheme, one sees a trick never seen before to make enough idiots naively believe that this time is different. Bitcoin also reflects the idiotic, somewhat vicious naivety of (part of) the extreme right (Larouche, Paul, etc.) about what a currency is.We have heard these idiocies for decades. No wonder Bitcoin was born from plutocracy central.

Stupid people are stupid! “Doesn’t matter computers compute in the background of Bitcoin. Pyramid schemes are always about guys making computations in the background.”You need to know that in advance. No excuses!

In the wake of Mt. Gox’s collapse, the supposed outing of Bitcoin’s creator, and some high-profile arrests, the financial services firm has put together an exhaustive survey of “Bitcoin” and “bitcoin” and ultimately finds the technology promising but the currency wanting.

The key takeaway: Bitcoin likely can’t work as a currency, but … the ledger-based technology that underlies it could hold promise.

For those still unfamiliar with the concept Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer network that allows for the proof and transfer of ownership without the need of a trusted third party, the Goldman Sachs report explains. The unit of the network is bitcoin.

Goldman Sachs’ analysts consider bitcoin — the unit of exchange — more like a commodity than a currency, according to the report.

“We would argue that Bitcoin, and other digital currencies, lie somewhere on the boundary between currency, commodity and financial asset,” write Dominic Wilson, chief markets economist at Goldman Sachs, and Jose Ursua, a global economist with the firm. “Our best definition would be that it is currently a speculative financial asset that can be used as a medium

Thanks Alexi, I appreciate your compliment very much. Please don’t hesitate to point out when I am wrong, I love those battles. Be it only because they make my arguments battle hardened. Differently from most, my one and only agenda hidden behind is exactly the one in plain view: truth. So, when I am wrong, I violate my own agenda, thus, myself.

“On net, more than taking off as a widely-used alternative currency, it is much more plausible that Bitcoin eventually has a significant impact in terms of its innovation on payments technology, by forcing existing players to adapt or coopt it,” the authors write.

If Bitcoin is, in fact, a commodity, Goldman’s head of commodities research, Jeff Currie, argues that it still won’t hold a candle to the gold-standard of commodities — gold.

“A commodity is any item that ‘accomodates’ our physical wants and needs. And one of these physical wants is the need for a store of value,” writes Currie. Currencies, by contrast, are instruments that are secured by either a commodity or a government’s ability to tax and defend.

By Currie’s reasoning, commodities become supplanted when a better commodity comes along, so, for him, the question is whether Bitcoin solves an economic problem that currently exists with gold.

“The short answer is no,” Currie writes. “Gold is not failing as a store of value as wood failed as a sources of energy in steam engines. Steam locomotives could go farther and faster on coal. But Bitcoin does not improve upon gold.”

Despite Goldman’s bearishness on the currency, the financial services firm does see promise in the technology platform itself, and other firms like the commodities trader Global Advisers are already actively trading Bitcoin directly on a proprietary basis.

“In my view there is voracious demand for new Bitcoin, and, similar to silver, prices will have to rise dramatically to meet it. Specifically I think the call on Bitcoin could very reasonably be $150 billion, which places it, ironically, in the same ballpark as the valuation of Amazon and of Greece’s M1 money supply,” Masters said.

Entrepreneurs and investors still see promise in the currency (or commodity) and the technology. As we’ve written previously, a new wave of startups are already launching services around Bitcoin and bitcoin that could provide the stability that the industry needs.

“We are seeing the amateur enthusiasts get weaned out and winnowed out,” said Jeremy Allaire, a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Circle – a Bitcoin startup backed by Accel and General Catalyst.

“Bitcoin has achieved real network effects on a global basis,” said Allaire. “The number of new projects and entities and companies being formed on a worldwide basis are legion… there are thousands of them.”

The critical component that’s missing for the adoption and use of Bitcoin is regulation, according to Allaire. “Ultimately what’s going to be necessary is common supervision. There need to be common rules for how digital currency exchanges, wallet services, etc. operate that are consistent around the world.”

Allaire also said that financial institutions like Goldman Sachs are going to have to step up. “All of the very top firms are very interested in the U.S. based trading exchange space,” Allaire said.

Goldman Sachs maintains that it does not yet have an institutional perspective on Bitcoin, but that several initiatives are underway to get a handle on the phenomenon.

Dear Nathan: “Local currency” means the Yuan, the Rouble, the Brazilian currency, etc. (or is it ruble?) They are backed up with military force, governments. They have nothing to do with Bitcoin. That’s backed up by crooks (I could give names).

Much hilarious stupidity here! What kind of logic do you actually use for reasoning? If bitcoin is a ponzi scheme, then every well definied tradable asset is a ponzi scheme. Bitcoin is just something you can trade, nothing more was promised, ever. Thus, very pure and easy to define the terms, nothing to argue about. It is fine and well to criticize bitcoin but labeling it a ponzi scheme just makes the arguing party look ignorant. BTW. you can fake being a lot of things, but can not easily fake being a geek! In fact, I think you would be surprised of the types of philosophy geeks do think about. In my view, your attack on geeks, weakens the strength of your position, as it is irrelevant to the conclusion.

Even Krugman believes Bitcoin is a classic con job, he just said so yesterday.
I would have appreciated to be told how I offended geeks. To my knowledge, geeks are people who are not very educated, but pose as such thanks to quirky ways they have been told real thinkers are often endowed with.
Some geeks at Google just charged $12,000 per person to listen to the sound of speaking asses talking about the future. I must admit that the whole idea is quite remarkable.

There is some validity to this point of view. However, there is also evidence that even Goldman Sachs is behind bitcoin, so the difference escapes me. Moreover, there are already parallel currencies for the ultrarich, say the art market. Finally the plutocratic order will not allow a parallel currency it does not control. A bubble, yes. Parallel currency, no. The enslavement, unfortunately, is global.
Patrice the Count

Nice article, thanks… And of course, doesn’t work for money, either, except if we want to waste all the energy of the world on transactions (the energy waste of the blockchains will render them illegal on a vast scale). Besides, currency is, fundamentally a sovereign political phenomenon, and sovereign politics means military control of worth.